How to Define the Action after VLC Playlist Ends

In VLC, there are different things that you can configure the player to do after it reaches the end of media files of your playlist. There might be a single file playing or there might be multiple files in the list, but once VLC is done playing the item(s), you can tell the player to quit or exit. You can also do other things like stop in the last frame of the video. The default action that you are used to is repeat the playlist and play everything from the start.

In this tutorial, you will learn how to do these things. Instead of the default action of playing a video or audio again after it finishes playing, you can instruct VLC to quit the player or stop at the last frame. It all depends upon what you what. The options for the actions are found under the advanced preferences under Playlist.

Here are the steps:

Go to Tools > Preferences.

Click on All to switch to Advanced Preferences.

In the left, scroll and click on Playlist.

In Playlist, check or uncheck these options to achieve certain functions:

Play and exit: Exits the player if there are no more items in the playlist.

Play and pause: After an item ends, pause it in the last frame. This option is also present in the Simple Preferences.

Of course, you might have noticed different other options like:

Play files randomly forever.

Repeat all: To repeat the entire playlist indefinitely.

Repeat current item: Plays the single file again and again (even if there are other items in the list).

Play and stop: Stops after each item in the list. You can continue manually.

Choose the best option for you and then don’t forget to hit the Save button in the end.

3 thoughts to “How to Define the Action after VLC Playlist Ends”

I can’t think of anything either. Only thing is if you want say random music file selection, save the playlist to a file and then open VLC click the random button first and then load the playlist. It will start on a random song that way, and continue to play random songs. Other than that I (like the last commentor) can’t think of any option that exists on vlc that can help you.